


perfect imperfect

by belby



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: A tiny bit, College AU, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Making Out, Marriage Proposal, Moving In Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-21 14:41:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18704398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belby/pseuds/belby
Summary: The one where Peter and Michelle are the dumb youth the media always warned you about, and get engaged while in college.





	perfect imperfect

**Author's Note:**

> mayhaps this is a mess but i gotta get my therapy for sitting through endgame SOMEHOW 
> 
> so enjoy a fic set in an alt universe that doesnt mention that movie at all !

Having Spider-Man as your boyfriend means that sometimes you see him on the news more than you see him in person.

Like right now, for example. Michelle sits in Peter’s shared apartment, in the spot on the couch where Peter usually sits (the couch cushion is, she swears, dented in the shape of him) and she is alone.

But Peter’s on the television.

It must be a slow news day, because the story is nothing more than a uninspired headline _– Heart-warming: watch Spider-Man save a young girl’s kitten –_ and shaky smartphone footage. Peter in his suit, climbing a tree with ease, bringing down a young girl’s kitten while the girl watches him, eyes wide as saucers and her hands clasped under her chin, a crowd forming around her.  

Michelle laughs despite herself, the whole thing a little too movie-cliché for her. Saving a kitten stuck up in a tree? Does that even happen in real life? Only for Peter, she thinks, would the universe present such a tooth-achingly cute moment.

(She can hear JJ Jameson’s impending radio rant already, _“A kitten in a tree? You’ve got to be kidding me. That kind of thing only happens in movies. You know, with a script and set production. Seems to me like Spider-Man stuck that poor girl’s cat up there himself)._

The crowd cheers as Spider-Man hands the little girl back her tiny mewling kitten. Peter catches the person filming him and throws them two terrible finger guns, before back flipping out there.

“Dork,” Michelle snorts.

Then, as the word echoes around the empty apartment, Michelle becomes aware of just how much she wishes that dork was here.

Ned had been the one who let her in, which isn’t surprising, because Ned is almost always home.

They’d chatted for a bit and he’d shown her the mobile gaming app he’s been working on – “Okay, Mark Zuckerberg,” Michelle had said, impressed. Ned had looked at her. “Please don’t insult me like that.”

And then he’d left, was going over to his parents’ place for dinner. He’d told her to help herself to the leftover pizza in the fridge, but when Michelle had looked for it, there was nothing there. There was an empty pizza box left on the coffee table, though, which was all the answers she needed.

She pokes at it with her toe now. The apartment is small and messy and smells three shades of boy. Peter and Ned have left their stuff everywhere, jackets and socks and dirty plates and so many _cables._ There’s about a hundred of them just spewing from the TV and gaming console in front of her alone. Like, she knows Peter and Ned are nerds, but, God, how many plain black cords do two people _need?_

A tiny spot next to her is the only place untouched by the PeterandNed disaster zone. A plush armchair, with a pillow settled neatly against it, sitting in a spot of sun that comes in through the windows. Harry’s chair. Where he likes to sit and go through his emails when he’s ever home. Neat and put-together, just like everything about Harry.

He’s about the only thing keeping this place from turning into a complete dumpster fire. Perhaps if he actually spent more than one night here at a time, the place would resemble something more liveable and less swamp-like.

But Harry is the most pro-active person Michelle knows, and she knows Peter, who buzzes if he has to sit still long enough.

Always working at his Dad’s company, spending time at fundraiser events, signing up for charity marathons. It kind of actually makes you feel a bit insecure about yourself, really, if you think about Harry’s life too much.

Michelle grabs an discarded packet of Doritos left next to her and throws it on Harry’s armchair. Just to be annoying.

Then she turns off the television, because _hearing_ about her boyfriend when she herself hasn’t seen him in _two days_ is getting on her nerves.

God, can he just _get here_ already. She’s been waiting for _ages…._

Her heart catches when the lock in the front door clicks.

Peter doesn’t see her when he enters. He’s got his backpack hanging from the crook of his elbow and his face furrowed at his phone. His face is flushed and damp from the cold weather outside, hair flattened by the rain. His t-shirt is wet, too. So.

“Hey, Ned,” he calls, without looking up. “You still home?”

He raises his head before Michelle can say anything. Eyes immediately drawn to the couch, where she sits.

His entire face lights up.

“Hey!” he says. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

If there’s one thing Michelle has never gotten used to, it’s just how _happy_ Peter gets when he’s around her. Right now, he looks so bright and warm it’s a surprise his wet t-shirt hasn’t dried from all the heat he’s emanating. And it’s simply because he’s excited to see her.

She doesn’t get why, nor completely understand it. But, still, that doesn’t stop it from making her so happy and embarrassed and endeared and awkward that she wants both wrap her arms around him and kiss him forever, _and_ shrink down and crawl away in a dark pit somewhere.

“I have the night free,” Michelle says.

“Holy shit,” Peter says. But something weird is happening – his face is falling. “And Ned’s not here.”

“Yeah,” Michelle says. “And I’m assuming Harry’s not turning up anytime soon so…”

“We’d have the night alone together,” Peter finishes. This is, perhaps, one of rarest and greatest sentences that could ever be uttered in their relationship. They are both so busy, what with college and part time jobs and Spider-Man, what with Peter’s house always being occupied with Ned in the other room, that time they get to spend alone together, just the two of them, is few and far between.

So Michelle is expecting some enthusiasm on Peter’s part – she is certainly feeling all warm and fluttery at the thought of a night-in with _just_ him – but his face just keeps falling. Until he looks equal parts devastated and irritated, and throws his head back with low, “ _Uughhhh.”_

“Okay,” Michelle says. “Rude.”

Peter snaps his head back to look at her. “Wait,” he says, hurriedly. “No, MJ, this isn’t…like you gotta understand. I’ve wanted this for, what? _Weeks_ now. But I’ve got a tutoring gig tonight!” He runs his hands over his face with another loud groan. “We finally get the place to ourselves and I’ve gotta teach some kid calculus. Holy fuck this has got to be some sort of punishment. From like God or whatever. Or maybe it’s because I never forwarded those chain emails all those years ago. I bet one was like ‘forward this to twelve people or in ten years when you finally get to spend time with your awesome girlfriend you’ll be stuck teaching some privileged kid his times tables instead.”

“Oh yeah,” Michelle says, amused. “That’s definitely it.”

Peter looks at her desperately, shoulders sagging. “What do I do?”

“You tutor the kid, obviously,” Michelle says, sounding confident in her decision, and definitely not like she had a brief, selfish, _fuck them kids,_ moment about two seconds ago. But Peter needs the money. He can’t hold down a stable part-time job like the rest of them, seeing as Spider-Man has such a random schedule, so he’s had to settle for taking up odd jobs here and there. Tutoring’s the newest one, and he’s really good at it. He’s also adventured in house sitting and mystery shopping and online surveys. He walks dogs too, sometimes, which is Michelle’s favourite. He’ll invite her along and they’ll walk with their sides squashed together and their hands clasped between them, like they’re some cheesy old married couple with a family full of dog-babies.

“Ugh,” groans Peter again, like he knows Michelle’s right.

“Don’t worry about it,” Michelle says. “I’ll just stay, be here when you get back.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I don’t mind watching TV by myself for a few hours.”

“Okay,” says Peter, nodding, getting some of his usual bouncy energy back. “Alright. Yeah. You can – have you had dinner? I think there’s leftover pizza somewhere – ”

“There’s not,” Michelle replies, but Peter is already shoving his head into the fridge. Michelle gets up, joins him in the kitchen. Which is really nothing more than a counter, stove and fridge. And a hundred unwashed plates.

She leans against the counter, watches him in amusement as he fusses over getting her something to eat.

“Hey,” she says, tugs him by the sleeve until he’s standing right in front of her. He looks her a little wide-eyed, as frenzied and scattered as this goddamn apartment. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry. I can get myself dinner.” A lock of his hair has fallen over his forehead and she reaches up and brushes it back with her fingers. She had given him a haircut herself only a couple of weeks ago – his hair had been getting so long to the point where she and May were practically _begging_ him to introduce himself to a pair of scissors every time they saw him – and with it wet, you can see how choppy and uneven it is. “Never let me cut your hair again.”

“I, personally, think it looks great,” Peter says. The frenzy of only a few seconds ago calmed by the soft feeling of Michelle’s fingers against his skin.

“Well don’t.”

Peter laughs through his nose. “Yes ma’am.”

And then his hand finds her waist and her fingers drift gently down his face to his jaw and they’re leaning in and they’re kissing.

It’s a kiss made up of them knowing each other and wanting each other and missing each other. It’s soft and it’s wistful. Peter’s hand leaves her waist and curls around to her lower back, pulling her closer to him. Michelle’s other hand curls in the fabric of his shirt, doesn’t matter that it’s wet, to hold him to her.

When they pull away, Peter rests his forehead to hers and says, “I’m cancelling.”

And Michelle really wishes he could. “Your girlfriend’s not more important than America’s youth,” she says.

“Says who?”

“Says me, I just said that.”

“Yeah, well – ” Peter’s interrupted by the sound of an alarm going off on his watch.  He looks at it like he wants to punch it. “Damn it. I have to go.”

“Then go,” Michelle says, pushing at his chest to get him moving, because he’s still just standing there, his hand on her back. “I’ll be here when you get back.”  

“Okay,” he says. He starts moving slowly backwards, holding his hands up as though trying to freeze her. “Don’t,” he punctuates the words with a step. “Go.” Another step. Anywhere.”

Then he bolts to his room, comes out with an armful of books, presses a kiss to her temple, and bursts out the front door.

“Love you!” he calls back, before the door snaps shut.

The apartment falls back into empty silence. Michelle is left only with the small, but mushy, smile on her face.

“Wait, does really he think I’m going to just stand here?”

 

 

By the time Peter gets home, it’s late, and pressingly-dark, and Michelle is asleep on the couch with the TV screen bathing her face in pink and blue light.

She stirs at the sound of him slinking across the apartment, and then half-wakes when she feels arms slide under her knees and back. He lifts her, bridal style, and carries her carefully to his bedroom.

She pretends to still be asleep as he lays her on his bed, draping the blankets up to her chin. But then lets herself open her eyes when he steps away to get changed, to amuse herself with the sight of Peter hopping around the room, trying to unstick his wet jeans from his legs.

“Hey,” she says.

“Oh.” Peter looks over at her in surprise. “Hey. Sorry. I tried not to wake you – ”

“How was the tutoring?” Michelle asks.

Peter kicks his jeans off from around his ankles, heaves a dramatic sigh. “I think I got stuck with the world’s dumbest kid. Is that a terrible thing to say? I feel like I should be allowed to say it, because he was also horrible. Like straight up _mean.”_

He tugs on his pyjamas and climbs into bed next to her. His mattress is only a single, so they’re squashed up right against each other, his body still cold from outside, hers warm. She wedges her leg between his, rests her head on his shoulder and rubs a hand up and down his chest, trying to warm him up.

“Poor baby,” she teases. “Bullied by a ten year old.”

“He was twelve actually.”

“Well, in that case – ” but Michelle cuts herself off when Peter slides out from under her. He plants a hand by her head and hoists himself up so he’s hovering over her, blocking out the barest light that been trickling into the room. She can hardly see his face. “What are doing?”

“I’ve been wanting to do this for hours,” Peter says. “Well, scratch that. I want to do this all the time.”

And she can see, somehow, his eyelashes flutter against his cheekbone as he leans in and kisses her.

It’s a kiss that starts out a lot like the soft, mushy kiss they’d had in the kitchen. Peter’s hand fits to her waist and she reaches up to cup his jaw. But then he begins to kiss her a little more eagerly, his weight pushing down into the bed. And her hand moves to grip the hair at the back of his head. It’s a lot more _hungry_ than it is _wistful_. Especially when Peter grabs her leg and hooks it over his waist. She loves that shit.

“Take your shirt off,” Michelle says.

Peter has never moved so fast.

Once his shirt is on the floor, he goes for the hem of her own. Hands slipping under the fabric, brushing against the bare skin of her stomach. It tickles and she laughs before she can help it.

Peter grins. Even in the dark she can see devilish hook to his mouth.  

“Don’t – ”

He ducks his head, presses his lips to her skin, and blows a raspberry right by her hipbone.

Michelle laughs so hard they almost don’t hear the front door open.

But they definitely hear it close.

They both freeze. Michelle holds her laughter behind pressed lips. Peter lifts his head from her stomach, raising slowly to her eye level. They stare wide-eyed at each other in the dark. Before lifting a finger to their mouths at the same time, signalling for the other to be quiet. (Which, incidentally, almost sets Michelle off into another round of laughter. It’s both hilarious and such a disgustingly, in-sync couple thing she wants to throw up).

It’s Ned, obviously. They can hear him humming to himself. Thankfully unaware of what had been happening in just the other room.

He rummages about the lounge-room for a bit, and Michelle and Peter only really breathe once they hear him finally disappear into his bedroom. But the apartment is so small and the walls are so paper thin that they can still hear him humming.

Peter tips forward and buries his face into Michelle’s shoulder.

“This fucking sucks,” he grumbles.

Michelle rests back against the pillow, staring up at the ceiling. Doesn’t move even Peter rolls over to lie next to her, all pushed up against her side. She’s just thinking. Of all the times something like this has happened before. Of all the times she’s turned up to the apartment and she and Peter have watched a movie together and eaten dinner and snuck quick kisses, with Ned only a wall away. Of all the times she’s brought Peter over for dinner, and they’ve sat stiffly at the table while her father integrated him, because she still lives with her parents. Of the time she and Peter had planned a night in, knowing Ned wasn’t going to be home, only to have _Harry_ turn up and actually want to stay at his own place for the first time in his life.

“It would be so much easier,” she says to the ceiling, “don’t you think, if we just had our own place.”

She can feel Peter studying the side of her face. For a moment, a bubble seems to in case them, all the outside sounds muffled, just Peter looking at her, just them, together, on this tiny bed.

He replies, “I do think.”  And it’s a light-hearted answer, but she supposes she’s not surprised. Because they’ve spoken about this before, but they were always light-hearted conversations. Jokes about how they’d probably end up malnourished, because neither of them can cook, ribbing each other over who would be messier (Peter, obviously), floaty faraway thoughts about what kind of house they’d buy in the distant future.

She think she’s being serious this time.

She doesn’t say anything more, though. Just stares at the ceiling and listens to the sound of Ned humming, still, in the other room. To the sound of Peter’s breathing evening out. She just thinks about it and thinks about it, until she falls asleep.

 

 

The next morning when she wakes, Michelle finds Ned making eggs on the stove and Peter hunched over on the couch, laptop on the coffee table in front of him, his eyes glued to the screen.

He startles when she enters, and snaps the laptop shut.

It’s such a weird and sudden thing that even Ned notices it. “Were you just looking at porn or something?”

“No,” says Peter, both embarrassed and offended. He sneaks a look at Michelle, ears red, like he really hopes she doesn’t think that’s what he was doing.  

“That’s exactly what he was doing,” Michelle says and Ned laughs. Peter tries to scoff but it comes out more like a squeak.

Michelle just smiles at him, teasing. She doesn’t really care what he was looking at it. It’s just, Peter’s inability to handle any embarrassment has always been one of the more endearing things about him. Back in the high-school days, before she let herself admit that she had a major crush on him, she’d tease and taunt him because, as she thought at the time, she liked how funny his reactions always were. She conceded to her crush when she could no longer pretend that she didn’t just think his habit of going red in the face when he was flustered was extraordinarily cute.

Ned serves her a plate of eggs, and they’re a little burnt but she never actually got around to having dinner last night, so she gulps them down like they’re the most delicious things on earth.

And then she’s tugging on her jacket and Peter’s also tugging on his jacket, because it goes without saying that he’ll walk her to the train.

The morning is crisp and drizzly. Low grey skies, breaths coming out in white clouds, the patter of light rain against rubber clothing. Peter’s brought an umbrella and they huddle under it together, heads bumping, elbows knocking.

“Can you hold it a little higher?” Michelle asks.

“Is that a dig at my height?” Peter says.

“It will be if you don’t hold the umbrella any higher.”

“Y’know some people say men can keep growing until they’re twenty five. I could still end up being a whole head taller than you.”

“I’m getting rained on.”

“Oops, sorry.”

“And you won’t.”

“Says who?”

“Says me, I just said that.”

Peter smiles at her, his face dewy from the damp air, cheeks flushed, hair beginning to flatten down against his forehead. She is caught off guard, really, by how she feels about him. Even after two years of dating (not counting that one year, the last year of high-school, where they’d become best friends and both very obviously liked each other and were _practically_ dating but not _technically_ so) she is still alarmed when he breaks through her defences, cracks her tough outer shell, and turns her into some sort of mushy-hearted, fluttery-stomached, love-sick _monster._

Okay, well, maybe monster is too far, and a bit of a knee-jerk reaction. But she is someone she’s not very used to being. Someone so far away from the awkward teenage girl who would flip Peter off every time he looked at her because she didn’t know how to handle how she felt whenever their eyes met.

And she is caught off guard, because she… likes it. She likes how she feels around Peter. She likes that he opened up all her emotions and made her less afraid to use them. Just as she brought all of Peter’s openness – open eyes, open ideas – and helped him keep them centred back on earth.

She likes him. They’re getting so close to the train now, and she doesn’t want to leave him. Because who knows when they’ll get a moment like this again? They’ll go back to their chaos, their perfect imperfect timing. Drowning in their classes and jobs and life. She’ll go back to her parents house, and he’ll go back to his and Ned’s and Harry’s apartment. And maybe they’ll go out for dinner or a movie sometime in the next week and that’ll be the only alone time they get, before they go back to Peter’s and his houseful of fullness, or her house and her bedroom above her parent’s own.

Michelle stops on the pavement. The rain pours down on her. “Peter.”

Peter stops in his tracks, about a step in front of her. She doesn’t ever call him Peter, not really. She doesn’t call him any real names at all. Unless you count ‘dork’ and ‘loser’ as names; and, once, she’d called him ‘babe’ because he sometimes uses that name for her, but it had felt weird, and she’d immediately corrected it to ‘bighead’.

So the name falls very heavily between them.

“I want to move in with you,” Michelle says. The rain pours down on her and her heart feels huge. “Not into your apartment. But into our own apartment.” A breath in. “Just the two of us.”

Peter is standing very still. Usually, he wears his heart on sleeve and every emotion he’s ever felt on his face. So it’s unnerving, to see him standing like that, paused.

Without saying anything, he moves towards her and holds up the umbrella over her head, because she had been getting soaked through to the bone. But it appears he moved to do only that because he remains silent. And she’s officially lost her confidence.

“Do you want to?” she asks, unsure, the following ‘ _it’s fine if you don’t’_ going unsaid.

“MJ,” says Peter, and he huffs a weak, squeaky little laugh. “I’m feeling very overwhelmed right now.”

“What?” She snorts to mask her upheaving nerves. “It’s not like I asked you to marry me.”

Something odd flashes across his face before it’s gone. “Yeah, I know, but. We always just sort of joked about it. I was never sure if you really wanted to – you know, like… it felt like there was never gonna be a right time! – like we were gonna be stuck in this fucking endless loop of never being alone forever.”

“We won’t be,” Michelle says, more certain now. “Move in with me.”

Peter grins at her bluntness. Her certainty bleeding into him. “Well, I can’t say no to that.”

“Okay,” says Michelle, trying to hide how inanely pleased she feels, and failing miserably.

“Okay,” Peter echoes, not trying at all to hide how inanely pleased he feels. He huddles back next to her under the umbrella. They are both dripping wet. But warm pressed against each other, with their matching goofy grins. It is so easy, how they fit together. Of _course,_ PeterandMichelle would make such a huge decision out here in the rain, on the slushy wet sidewalk, in only about five minutes. “And they were roommates,” Peter says.

Michelle hates that she laughs. It feels like everything is changing and nothing is. “Oh my god, they were roommates.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 They move into their new place, officially, one month and two weeks later.

It’s tiny. Smaller than Peter’s old apartment. One main room which has squashed together a lounge-room and kitchen and dining room into one. A bedroom, a bathroom, and a squeezy, cupboard-sized laundry.

They have to fill it with furniture themselves. Which means a trip or four to Ikea, where Peter has to stop Michelle from buying every tiny houseplant she sees, and Michelle has to stop Peter from making the same joke where he points at a blank display TV and says ‘I love this show!’ because it’s only really funny the first three times.

And soon, the apartment becomes an conglomeration of MichelleandPeter. All their mismatched Ikea furniture, the cheapest they could find, small potted plants on the coffee table by their large window, the curtains pulled back to let in the sun whenever the grey clouds part and the rain stops and the air fills with white sunlight.

But it doesn’t really sink in. Not the first night, when she and Peter slip into their new double bed and fall asleep to the gentle sounds of each other, of their fridge whirring, of rain falling, of a quiet place, filled with only them. Not the next morning, where they trip over each other, pieces of toast held between their teeth as they slip on their shoes, rush out the door, late for their classes.

It doesn’t sink in when they get home later that night and watch TV while eating microwave dinners. It _starts_ to sink in when they brush their teeth together, hips bumping in the bathroom.

But really, it’s two weeks in, when Michelle fully realises that this is _real_ , that she’s moved in with her boyfriend, that she and Peter are now on the path to having something of a life together.

Because she gets sick.

Two weeks in and she wakes one morning with her body aching and her head sore and tight. Peter isn’t home, had gotten up early to go to a lecture, so she rolls out of bed alone. Holds her head with a wince as she pads out into the kitchen, fills a glass with water, and gulps down the whole thing. The water soothing against her chapped lips and sandpaper throat.

She decides, after taking something for her head, showering and dressing and getting ready to leave, that this is simply the past two months of excitement and stress catching up on her.

So she goes to her classes as usual, waving off the sore throat and dry cough she develops in one of her lectures, and when she get home later that evening and a chill takes over her, she concludes simply that all she needs is some chicken soup and a nap.

This means heading down to the little grocery store only a couple streets away, because they don’t have chicken soup, or any kind of warm meals, at home. (They have about ten boxes of cereal, though). Throwing on an extra coat and scarf because the chills have gone down the bone, ducking her head against the light patter of rain as she makes her way down the street. The store seems a little bright when she enters, fluorescent light glinting off colour packaging, shiny white floors.

When she finds the soups, she spends about five minutes just staring at a single can, because she finds, for some reason, that she can’t read it.

A sweat has begun to bead at her forehead. Does this say chicken or cauliflower? Everything on the shelf merges into one discoloured, fuzzy blob. Her hand hovers over another can. The scarf around her neck feels stifling, trapping muggy hair between the fabric and her throat.

 _Fuck it,_ she thinks, and grabs two soup packets that look like they have the vague form of a cartoon chicken on them. She fumbles with her purse for too long when she goes up to pay. But then she’s scooping up her soup in her arms and stepping back out into the cold.

And she just about keels over.

She catches herself on the grocery store wall, hand against the rough brick. Tries to catch her breath, but she suddenly feels like she’s just run a marathon. There’s a building pressure in her chest, inhaling and exhaling in short, dry little breaths, legs feeling like jelly.

The dreary street begins to spin in her front of her.

“Fuck,” she groans, squeezing her eyes shut. She waits for it to pass but it doesn’t. And so she doesn’t something she really didn’t want to do.

She calls Peter.

“MJ!” says Peter, answering on the third ring. His voice is a little muffled as it always is in the Spider-Man suit. “You’ll never guess what I did today. Actually don’t guess because I wanna tell you. I stopped this real fucking dangerous car chase and –  ”

“Can you pick me up?” Michelle interrupts, her voice much weaker than she ever would have liked.

Peter stops, and his alarm bleeds through the phone, even in his silence. “Is everything okay?”

Here’s something Peter has offered to do a million times: swing her around the city whenever she wants to go somewhere, swing her to classes whenever she’s late.

Here’s something Michelle has denied a million times: all of that.

There are more important things Spider-Man could be doing, she had said once, than getting his girlfriend to class on time.

So Michelle has never, not once, asked Peter to do this.

“Yeah,” she says. “Uh. I wasn’t feeling too good so I thought I’d buy myself some chicken soup but now I’m here at the store and. Well my symptoms have gotten worse and I feel like I might pass out.”

“ _What?_ MJ, why didn’t you tell me!”

“What?”

“That you were sick! I could’ve gotten all that stuff for you.”

“I’m _fine.”_

Peter laughs, she can imagine him shaking his head in disbelief. “No you’re not, you’re literally calling me right now trying to cash in on your ‘being Spider-Man’s girlfriend’ privileges. That’s, like, peak red-flag that you’re not fine.”

“Yeah, well, I _was_ fine.”

“God, your stubborn,” says Peter, the same way he might say, _God, you’re beautiful_ , or _God, I love you._

Michelle feels warm, but who knows whether it’s from him or her rising fever. “Are you coming or not?” she grumbles.

“I’m already half-way there. Meet me in the alley next to the store okay?”

He fusses over her when he arrives. She swats him away, curls her arms around him, and tells him to just take her home already.

He swings real careful and slow.

 

The fever must really mess with her head, because when they arrive at their apartment, she has a moment where she thinks “why didn’t he take me home?”

In her foggy, flu-riddled brain, her home is still her parent’s house. Where her mother would nurse her back to health if she got sick, press her lips to Michelle’s forehead in the mother-method of checking her temperature, tell her which pills are best for a headache, home-make soup that she’d bring Michelle in bed.

“Do you want to get into bed? I’ll warm up that soup for you,” says Peter, kicking out of the Spider-Man suit. His hair is sticking up everywhere from tugging his mask off. Looks at her carefully, before reaching over and pressing the back of his hand against her forehead. “You feel really warm.”

Michelle is having a real moment of adjustment. Trying to slot back into reality, this new reality, while her mind swims over what her reality used to be. Instead of her mother smiling at her in that soft, caring way, it is Peter. He takes her hand and leads her to the bedroom. Helps her peel off all her layers, because her clothing has started to make her really sweat. Brings her a large glass of her water once she’s settled in bed.

 _Take me home_ , she’d said and he’d taken her here. Where her clothes are tucked away in the drawers and her towels hang over the bathroom door and her shampoo sits in the shower, next to Peter’s clothes and towels and shampoo. Where she can rest when she’s sick and vulnerable, in this bed, where she and Peter sleep. Where Peter opens up the packets she’d bought and warms up the soup on the stove – fills each tiny room with the warm, pleasant smell and makes sure she eats it.

She falls asleep not long after. Wakes when she feels the bed shift a couple hours later. It is dark and quiet and Peter is a shadow shuffling in beside her.

“You shouldn’t sleep here,” Michelle says, voice no more than a croak. “You’ll get sick.”

“Probably already too late, don’t you think?” Peter says.

“You should sleep on the couch,” Michelle says. Fights against the thick fog of sleep and builds up a sort of determination in her tone. Peter has looked after her and now she wants to look after him. “The last thing I want to be responsible for is getting the neighbourhood’s superhero too sick to do any superhero-ing.”

“I’ll be fine.” He faces her on his side, barely anything more than a Peter-shaped figure in the dark. Brushes a lock of hair from her face. “Someone should keep an eye you, anyway.”

Michelle grabs him gently by the wrist, pushing his hand back into his chest, away from her face. “Peter,” she says. “Please.”

Peter exhales. There’s no arguing with that. “Okay,” he says, reluctantly climbs out of bed. “But I’m allowed to come in here and check on you at least four times in the night.”

“It’s not like this flu is going to kill me,” Michelle says. “But deal.”

And when Michelle wakes the next morning, feeling less like she’s been run over by a truck and more like she’s been run over by a small car, she finds Peter still asleep on the couch. He’s on his back with his limbs falling off the edge and his mouth open, his laptop perched on his stomach. All of his things, and her things, scattered in the room around him.

And it’s sunken in. Right deep in her chest, right through to her achy flu-bones.

This is her home.

 

 

It’s not perfect. Living together. They argue, sometimes. But it’s nothing ever even two steps close to a fight, and is usually over something stupid, like Peter leaving his socks on the floor, or Michelle’s inability to stop buying house plants, or all Peter’s goddamn _black cables._

And it’s not like they magically see each other all the time now. Their schedules are still as hectic as ever. But at least at night they sleep beside each other, limbs tangled until they form one person. At least they have those sleepy mornings where the apartment smells of coffee and they lean their hips against the kitchen counter and smile at each other over their coffee mugs.

It’s not perfect but it’s better. It’s different. They learn new things about each other. Like, for example, the fact that bouncy, excitable Peter can’t stop moving even when he brushes his teeth, and will jog in place, getting toothpaste all over his mouth. Like that Michelle is a sucker for junky reality TV (“the _Bachelor?”_ Peter had asked, eyebrows shooting up into his hairline when he caught her watching it. “We might have to break up”). Like that they make a great team when it’s ten minutes until May comes over and they’ve completely forgotten about it and the whole place is a mess. (They had moved about the apartment like clockwork, throwing clothes at each other across their bed, ducking in and out rooms, their urgency showing through peals of ridiculous laughter).

Michelle learns some things about herself too. Her love language, for instance. She’s never been good with expressing her feelings verbally, nor initiating physical contact, and, in fact, can be sometimes overwhelmed by the two. She thought it was Quality Time. That she expressed love, felt love, through just _being_ with a person.

But she discovers that she likes…performing _…Acts of Service_ , as it’s called, on lovelanguages.com. For instance, Peter had once complained that, well, he didn’t help people for the reward, of course, but it would be nice if someone gave Spider-Man a free lunch once in a while. And the next day, on a whim, Michelle had made him a lunch and left it in the fridge with a note – _For Spider-Man (Peter don’t touch)_ for him to find. A strange sort of excitement coursing through her for the rest of the day, as she sat in her lectures, thinking of how’d he react once he saw it.

In typical unconventional PeterandMichelle fashion, she experienced his reaction only a few hours later, when she was leaving campus, and bumped into a crowd of college kids taking selfies with Spider-Man.

He gave her a two fingered salute when he spotted her through the crowd. “Thank you for the lunch, ma’am. Much appreciated.”

A gaggle of girls whipped around to look at her, shocked. Whispers of _“she had lunch with him?”, “does that girl know Spider-Man?”, “holy shit”_ bubbling up around them.

Michelle glared at Peter, for putting her on the spot like this, but there was no heat to it.  She was pleased that he appreciated it. And there was something very satisfying about Peter looking at her while being surrounded by a bunch of adoring fans. About their little secret of their normal, _domestic_ life waving right in front of over twenty oblivious faces.

“I’m glad you liked it,” Michelle replied plainly, and she really was.

“Need me to escort you home?” Peter asked. He always lowered his voice a little, when he was Spider-Man. Twenty one year old Peter never really lost the high timbred voice of fifteen year old Peter. “It’s a dangerous city out there.”

“I’m good.”

“You can escort me home,” one of the girls said, her voice fifty shades of suggestive.

“Well, maybe,” said Peter, his lowered tone rising.

“You know he was totally flirting with you, right?” another girl said, this time to Michelle, once Peter had turned his attention back to selfies.

Michelle snorted, watched Peter hold up peace signs to the camera. “Not interested.”

She does lots of little things for Peter after that. Checks over an essay he’d fallen asleep writing and edits out the spelling errors. Makes him a coffee unprompted. Pairs his socks when doing laundry, because he can never find any that match.

Peter’s love language is to spill his guts over everything he ever thinks about her. _I love you, you’re beautiful, how did I ever live without you._ It’s kind of ridiculous that someone who is hiding a whole secret identity is so willing to blurt out any thought that pops into his head.

 

 

* * *

 

 

When Michelle’s third year old college comes and goes, she starts thinking very seriously about her future.

There’s a lot of uncertainty. All her upcoming years feel grey and murky, flimsy and unstable, ready to flip over at any moment.

She thinks she’s going to be a journalist. Okay, actually, she’s _sure_ of it now.

But…is she, though? It’s a scary thing to say, definitely, _yes, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life._

Part of her wants to just run away, find a little cottage out in the middle of a forest, where no-one can find her, where she is untouched by all things that aren’t leafy green trees and crisp, earth-toned air.

And Peter would come with her, of course.

He is the one thing she is sure about.

Any future she has, whether it be hard-cutting journalism, or a dreamy home-life out in nowhere, she wants Peter to be apart of it.

It was never a conscious decision she made. He just _is,_ in all her musings, her fantasies, about all the years to come. Oh, once I have a stable income, I’ll buy Peter a pair of sneakers that won’t crumble from all of his Peter-ness. Oh, when I get a dog, it’ll have to be a short haired one, because Peter is allergic to long haired pets. Oh, when we get an actual house, Peter and I will get a king sized bed because he’s a chronic moving sleeper. Oh, in my future, there will be Peter.

“Not to sound cheesy, but I think we’re gonna be together forever,” Peter whispers to her as they’re falling asleep one night, and it seems he shares all her feelings about the future, too.

She knows what it means for them.

 

 

“I know I always say it,” says May one night when she’s over for dinner. She has a glass of wine hovering below her mouth. The rim stained with her lipstick. “But this place really is tiny.”

No one says anything for a moment. Peter and Michelle look about the place – their squashy couch soaked in TV light, Michelle’s books fixed neatly on the coffee table, next to her plants, art hoisted up on the walls – with a sense of pride, adoration. May studies it with an air of deep contemplation and discernment.

“Not really a place to raise a family, is it?” May says.

Both Peter and Michelle choke on their dinners.

“Um,” says Peter weakly, eyes watering, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “We – we’re not, uh. You know. Like we’re just….And still in college – ”

“Oh, I was just saying,” May says, waving her hand airily. “Just a broad statement. Not really aimed at anyone.”

She lets the topic drop, thankfully, and no one brings it up again.

That is, until May leaves, and Peter and Michelle are alone, washing up after dinner.

“I like our tiny apartment,” Michelle says, out of nothing, because she hasn’t stopped thinking about it. May’s pursed-lipsticked words bouncing around her whole being.

Peter washes their plates in the sink. She watches his arms as he works. “It…I mean it would be nice, though. Don’t you think? To, like, have a big house in the future?” he says, sneaks a small glance at her.

“Yeah,” Michelle says. “So we can raise our dog family.”

Peter smiles at her. It is something gentle and private and quiet, over his shoulder. Michelle is struck, at once, at how much they’ve grown. From the awkward teens in high-school who burned bright red whenever their hands touched. To living together, to having a relationship so steady and stable it’s as though it’s the ground beneath their feet. They don’t have to think twice about it. You don’t think, ‘will the ground be there today? Will it still hold me up in the future?” You just slip out bed each morning and know that it will catch you.

Michelle places the glass she was drying on the counter. She runs her hand up Peter’s arm, the curves and divots of his muscled biceps, along his broad shoulder, up his neck, and then cups his jaw with both hands to turn his face toward her.  She kisses him with his hands still in the dishwater in the sink.

Peter pulls his hands of the sink, fumbles around the counter for a tea towel, and dries his hands all without breaking the kiss.

Michelle smiles against his mouth. “You’re such a dork.”

Peter rests his hands on her hips, his fingers still a little wet. “Yeah, but you still wanna raise a dog family with me.”

“True,” Michelle says. “I don’t know why I do, but I do.”

“That makes you a bit of a loser, I think,” Peter says. And then he kisses her again.

They both know what this means for them.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It happens when she least expects it.

You’d have thought she would have caught on early. Perceptive, clever MJ, with the observation skills of a well-trained spy and a mind sharp as a tack.

Especially when, in hindsight, she realises there were many instances where Peter made it _glaringly obvious._

Snapping his laptop shut whenever she got close, hushed conversations with Ned that dropped as soon as she entered the room, the way he was teary-eyed and so exorbitantly _happy_ after spending an evening at May’s house alone only a week before (he had told her what he was going to do, Michelle realises now, and they had probably both cried for hours about it).

Then there was the time where she bumped into him again during one of his impromptu Spider-Man meet and greets, and he’d thought it fun to flirt with her and ask her name, unfazed when she drily replied that it was Ned Leeds and that she was taken, and had said, “Your partner is one lucky person, Ned. You know, honestly, I would marry you, if I were them.”

They even had a reservation for a fancy restaurant booked for this weekend. A _fancy restaurant._

(Of course, they never make it there).

But none of it really registered. Not even in Michelle’s keen mind. They were two dumb kids in college, it didn’t really seem like a possibility.

So she is caught off guard, the rug pulled out from under her feet, a gaping-mouthed fool, when it happens. On Thursday night when they’re both pulling all-nighter, frantically trying to finish essays they’ve been too busy to write.

They run out of coffee at midnight. Michelle suggests they head down the 24 hour Starbucks about a block away. It’s cold and raining but their desperation for more caffeine overrules, and they head down, arms linked, heads ducked under an umbrella, into the dreary night.

“This reminds me of when I said we should move in together,” Michelle says. The rain, their puffy jackets, the fighting to keep the umbrella over their heads. “Do you remember that?”

 _“Do I?”_ Peter snorts. “That was only, like, the best moment of my life.”

Their feet have fallen into the same rhythm, sneakers soaking through from the puddled-pavement. Michelle presses her smile into Peter’s shoulder.

“I wonder if you actually have gotten any taller since then,” she says, teasing.

“You haven’t noticed that I’m now six foot three?”

“I haven’t. Because you aren’t. But you’re not twenty five yet, so you have time.”

“Just you wait,” Peter says. “I’m gonna wake up on my twenty fifth birthday as a jacked, six foot seven _beast.”_

Michelle laughs at the mental image. Their feet fall out of step and then back in. “That’d be awful,” she says.

“Says who?”

“Says me,” Michelle says. She smiles at him. “I just said that.”

Peter smiles right back. Their faces so close as they hunch under the umbrella. She should’ve known it then. With Peter looking at her like that, gentle and adoring and as though she held his future in her hands.

The street in front of the Starbucks is fairly empty from the weather, the lateness of the hour, but through the front glass wall, glowing warm orange from the inside out, she can see a decent line of people waiting for coffee.

A poster on the wall catches her eye. Advertising a new drink – something pink and blue and purple and topped with whipped cream, rainbows and unicorns floating around it.

“That looks horrible,” says Michelle. She takes her coffee black, thank you very much. But…something about the promise of so much sweetness and sugar _does_ sound kind of good right now. After all the dry text she’s been reading through, after standing out here in the cold. She adds, “I want ten.”

Behind her, Peter says, with some kind of reckless abandon, coming to some kind of long-debated conclusion, “oh, fuck it.”

And when she turns around he is on one knee.

Michelle is sure she says something, when she sees him. That _something_ blurts out of her mouth. But she couldn’t tell you what. All she knows is she starts shaking, immediately. That her hands go numb. That the rain pours down on her and heart feels huge.

“MJ,” says Peter, he pulls a small black box from his coat pocket, and it trembles in his hand when he holds it out between them. “Michelle.”

“Peter,” says Michelle. Her voice small and watery.

“I was going to do this on Saturday, at that restaurant,” Peter says. “But I think if I had to wait any longer I would literally die.”

Who knows if Michelle sobs or laughs when she says, “this suits us better anyway.”

That same smile from under the umbrella crosses Peter’s face, though this shakier, far more nervous, far more happy.

“Do you remember that morning?” he says. “After you spent a night at my old apartment? You came into the lounge-room and I panicked and shut my laptop and you were and Ned thought I was looking at porn.”

Michelle laughs, _Yes._

“Well, I wasn’t. I was looking at engagement rings. Because in the night I’d gotten the idea that I was going to propose to you and we were going to run away and live in a house where we’d never struggle to find alone time together ever again.”

“Oh my god,” Michelle breathes. Overwhelmed, short-circuiting, her whole body turned to jelly. Everything inside her so hard to contain that she has say _something,_ though what comes out is no more than a squeaky, “you’re kneeling on a filthy New York sidewalk.”

Peter smiles at her but doesn’t want to derail. “It the first time I had ever looked,” he continues. “But it wasn’t the first time I thought about it.” He opens the box, the ring catching in all the warm Starbucks light. “I know we don’t have to run away anymore,” he says. And he takes a deep breath. And Michelle starts crying. And the rain finally stops pouring. And the whole damn world spins. “But will you marry me?”

They are young and twenty two and still in college. And they don’t have to get married right now, sure, because they have their whole futures ahead of them, but they know that what ever kind of future they have, the other will also be in it.

They know if Peter hadn’t proposed now, then Michelle would’ve proposed later, then Peter would’ve proposed later, then, then, then.

That no matter how it had happened, it would’ve always ended the same.

It would’ve always ended like this:

Michelle says yes.

**Author's Note:**

> lemme plug my [twitter](https://twitter.com/spideychelle) while yall are here


End file.
